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My #365movies Project (week 1 and 2)

The Idea was simple. I hadn’t been taking time to relax and watch movies, so I would make a game out of it. This is how bad things have gotten, I have to give myself a chore to stop myself always doing chores and not relaxing. So I decided to watch 365 movie in 2017. I started new year’s day and have gotten up to know. Here is the first two weeks…
If you see an asterisk, then this is my first viewing of the film.

#1 – RED*
We started watching at about 10:30 New Years Eve, and finished after Midnight on New Year’s day. I wasn’t super impressed with the movie. Somewhere along the lines, super silly, over the top started the bore the living crap out of me. The fact that poor Mary-Louise Parker could have been replaced by a sexy lamp did nothing to help. The whole thing felt underdeveloped and over blown. Was not a fan.

#2 Mon Oncle*
Oh my God, where has this movie been all my life? I bought that Jacques Tati set from Criterion and for reasons best left unexplored I started with this movie. It’s not perfect, but I found a lot to like. I’m a fan of physical comedy, and silent films and the like, so this movie worked for me a lot. Tati’s work is known as containing themes about how the modern world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but as Hulot reacts to things in an affable manner, you sort of don’t notice. The movie doesn’t come right out and say modernity sucks, but it’s woven into every part of the movie. I liked this one. I’m probably over blowing it, but this is the movie that has stuck with me so far.

#3 The Dead Will Walk*
Included on one of the George Romero zombie DVDs, this little retrospective documentary killed about 90 minutes of time. There isn’t a lot to say, since it’s just a few interviews cobbled together with some vintage documentary footage that is from another documentary that is probably on the same DVD set this came from. Not bad, but it’s something you watch once on New Year Year’s day having already watched two other movies that day.

#4 Magnificent Seven (2016)*
There just wasn’t much there. I can see why this flopped, there’s not much story and the action is kind of basic. I have the same problems with this as the 3:10 to Yuma remake. There was a point where the action just became like watching someone else play a video game. The original had 40 bad guys, you could see the progression as the power balance moved back and forth. I have no idea how many millions our 7 heroes killed, but they all looked bored doing it. There’s so much wrong that going into would just be a series of complaints.

#5 Ant-Man*
I liked Ant-Man better, but in many ways it’s just another Marvel Movie. I like the Marvel movies, but I feel a strange reluctance about them. I like them well enough while watching them, but find lately that I hesitate to see them in the theaters. I didn’t see Ant-Man in the theaters, and while I got Captain America: Civil War at the same holiday I got this, I haven’t re-watched that yet. Still, it’s a pretty good movie, I fear I may be getting burned out on the Marvel formula.

#6 Geisha Assasin*
I may have owned this movie for three years and never watched it. I love samurai movies, but I just couldn’t with this cheap little thing until now. I do mean cheap. If this movie cost more than $27 to make, I will eat my hat. It looks like it was shot with prosumer DV cams and all expense was spared on the script because the whole script could fit on the back of an envelope. It looks cheap, the action has a good reputation, but I wasn’t impressed. HOWEVER! I have a strong notion that a room full of half drunk friends could turn this movie into pure gold. You can talk, you can laugh, you can play drinking games with how many cheap fighting movie gags are used (spoiler, it’s all of them) this may be a party movie rather than a sit alone movie.

#7 San Quentin*
And then we drifted into the move basic, boiler plate guys in prison movie that ever there was. It’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s that I was forgetting this movie while I was watching it. It’s just not memorable and everyone was sort of sleepwalking through their parts.

#8 Gotti*
Yeah, the HBO movie. I have seen a lot of gangster movies, and this was one of them. A random present Syd bought me off my wishlist one day. Again, a sort of basic, boilerplate movie. It’s a thing that happened.

#10 Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure*
Stand up. Eddie Izzard Stand up. You know what you are getting into with this. There is a point where all his shows sort of blend together for me. The jokes here are fresher in my mind, but I expect that they will fade into the pot of Eddie Izzard Bits.

#11 Playtime*
I livetweeted my thoughts on this one so you can go look, but I’ll sum up. This is a beautifully made movie that goes on too long, has no particular plot (or too many) and is seriously a mess. I have never felt so conflicted. On the one hand there are masterful jokes and hilarious moments, but there are also things that go on so long that I actually said “Is this scene still happening?” while watching. I have never felt so bored and fascinated at the same time. I am totally going to watch this again, and will be frustrated again, but I can see why it failed.

#12 The Golden Spiders
I really like the Nero Wolfe Mysteries show. I had to eventually watch stuff I had seen before, and I’m glad it this one. This show got me into the books, which are some of my favorite books in detective fiction. I love this first made for TV movie. It’s pretty great.

#13 Traffic*
Okay… so… it was shorter than Playtime, and it had a plot, but I can almost see Tati’s teeth gritting every time he has to come on screen as Hulot. One thing I find interesting, and it’s shown more here than some of the earlier movies, Tati seems to be okay with young people and youth culture. He looks backwards to a simpler time, but young people are usually the good people in his movies. The helpful strangers all always in their 20s in this movie.

#14 Horse Feathers
I like the Marx Brothers, Grocho is fun. Watching Chico play piano is like watching a magic trick… and then there’s Harpo. The older I get the less interested in Harpo I become. And Zeppo is Zeppo. Still, fun enough movie.